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About Me

Before arriving at Duquesne, I spent a decade at Coastal Carolina University and the University of South Carolina teaching courses in history and Southern studies. However, I began my career as a public historian working in museum education, which taught me the art of crafting tours and developing public and educational programs. Most recently, I developed the semi-guided tour, trained and evaluated docents, and processed visitor evaluations for the reopening of the Woodrow Wilson Family Home (WWFH) as it transformed from an eighty-year-old presidential shrine into the nation’s first museum of Reconstruction. In 2015, the museum received South Carolina’s Preservation Award for Tourism and the American Association of State and Local History’s national merit award.

I specialize in public history and the tensions involved in public history commemorations and interpretation. My recent scholarship explores the ways in which Reconstruction history has been contested and commemorated in South Carolina. My current project traces the rebirth of the WWFH as a modern historic house museum, using it, along with docent oral histories, as a lens to analyze inclusivity, white supremacy, and contested history in museums and other public spaces.

As a historian, I have always conducted oral history projects and relied on oral history in my scholarship. Similarly, I continue to employ film as a means of dissemination and source material for my work. I have written, produced and/or directed documentaries as well as exhibit and promotional materials for museums. These experiences and an internship with the Moving Image Research Collection at USC inspired new questions for me about the role of film, moving image archives, and digital humanities as public history. I am especially drawn to the history and design of exhibit film in public history settings. I explore this topic via the WWFH’s exhibit films, which incorporate the Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915), artistic responses to it, and locally archived moving images and photographs to discuss white supremacy and citizenship.

Recent Publications

Dissertation

Rebirth of the House Museum: Commemorating Reconstruction at the Woodrow Wilson Family Home

Articles

“Reconstructing Memory: The Attempt to Designate Beaufort, South Carolina the National Park Service’s First Reconstruction Unit,” Journal of the Civil War Era, co-author Page Putnam Miller, special issue on the era of Reconstruction, March 2017

Blogs

Postscript to “Reconstruction Memory” in Muster from the Journal of the Civil War Era

“Inclusive training at Historic Columbia” from NCPH’s blog History@Work

Reconstructing Reconstruction

Video Production

The Legacy of Woodrow Wilson and Reconstruction (Historic Columbia, Director Lee Ann Kornegay 2014)

Protest in the Port City: The Story of the Wilmington Ten (2006)

American Coup: The Wilmington Election, Riot and Coup of 1898 (2005)

Belle Meade Plantation Marketing Video (2004)

Belle Meade Plantation Education Video (2003)

Media Coverage

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, C-Span

Social Media

@JWhitmerTaylor

Country Focus

Expertise by Geography

United States

Expertise by Chronology

19th century, 20th century

Expertise by Topic

American Civil War, Emancipation, Gender, Material Culture, Museums, Public History, Race, Sexual Violence, Slavery, Women